The Biggest Spiritual Loser

This post was birthed from a humorous conversation with my wife about current technology, and how I was going to go on a social network fast because I was frustrated with the time it eats. I merely log-in to check an e-mail or respond to a status update or stupid pointless application request, and before I know it I am submerged in photos/profiles wasting precious time that I could be using to do something productive.

The initial title of this post was – “Could you go 7 days without Facebook?” Could you literally close your Facebook right this second, and not be tempted to look at it until this time next week? Let’s not limit this to scenario to Facebook. Do you think you could you go 7 days without…

Granted there are gray categories…like those who rely on the internet because they have online businesses or online students…but there are a lot of luxuries we pretend we cannot live without. We convince ourselves that it is a need, and eventually this untamed desire grows until it becomes an obsession. I once read in a book that need involves demand and implies there is something lacking in life. In essence we spend time in these areas because there is a void of some sorts…a void that only God can fulfill.

Looking through my normal rotation of fitness websites, I ran across an article by a nutritionist recommending the removal of sugar from your diet. It went on to discuss how your body becomes adjusted to sugar, so you don’t really understand the harm until you clean it out of your system. After a few weeks, once you reintroduce sugar to your body it will immediately make you sick.

Oftentimes I have to wonder as men/women trying to do right and grow spiritually, how many things in life serve as sugar? What things in our diet do we introduce daily and act like we can’t live without? I have a few friends and oftentimes we discuss fitness and our goals for getting back in shape. No matter how much talk goes on, ultimately it comes down to discipline and obedience. Most of us want to have the (fill in the blanks) physique but don’t want to fuel our bodies properly. We want to eat whatever we want to eat. The problem is our mannerisms carry over into our spiritual walk. We want all the benefits of being His child, but don’t want to be disciplined. Instead of feeding our spirit healthy Word, we’d rather ingest junk and clutter it with nonsense. We basically want to do whatever we want to do, and want God to bless our efforts because we feel we are good people in other areas of life. Our resumes say we are full time believers, but we put in part-time hours.

Sometimes I feel like the biggest spiritual loser. When you think about how we waste our time, most of us believers are not acting like the leaders we were called to be. Are we just conformists? Are we becoming the same hypocritical generation we accused the previous one of being? Just food for thought.

“You will either follow God’s standards by deliberate choice, or you will follow the world’s standards by default” – Myles Monroe